John Jairo

John is a 49-year-old man who has known how to work the land since he was a very young, thanks to the teachings of his family. Currently and for the last 7 years, he has been growing peppers, corn and onions which he sells in order to provide for his family - a wife and teenage son. John also works as a butler on a ranch to earn extra money. He is industrious and works long days, overcoming various obstacles such as the changing climate and the effect it has on his plants, but he always moves forward with his dream of expanding and diversifying his crops, which will enable him to offer work to other members of his community. It is for this reason he is asking for a loan, which he will invest in buying wholesale agricultural supplies (fertilisers, irrigation equipment and seeds). These will help him continue with his work and obtain a better quality harvest, thereby increasing his earnings. In this way, John hopes to be able to improve his family's wellbeing and economic stability.

Additional Information

More information about this loan

By funding this loan, you are promoting entrepreneurship in remote regions, including areas recovering from guerilla warfare in Colombia, and helping to reverse the rural exodus which occurred in the past decades when a the rural population fled their countryside homes for the safer cities.

This Kiva loan was created by Kiva's field partner Interactuar specifically for Kiva funding, in an effort to reach more borrowers in rural areas. Most of the Interactuar's lending operations are focused in urban parts of Medellin. But this loan product is designed to provide working capital to riskier agricultural businesses who have been traditionally excluded from the finance sector.

Important Information

This loan is structured on Kiva as a bullet loan, which means a single payment is required at the end of the loan term. By Colombian law, Kiva's partner Interactuar is required to offer borrowers loans with a variable interest rate that fluctuates with the market rate. Because fixed monthly payments are applied first to interest and then to principal, Interactuar is unable to predict upfront what portion of each repayment would go towards the loan principal. This creates a challenge with Kiva's system, which doesn't allow for unpredictable principal payments, and can result in some Interactuar clients appearing falsely delinquent. To remedy this, the loan has an end-of-term repayment plan on Kiva, but the borrower will continue scheduled monthly repayments to Interactuar, who will then pass along the principal amount to Kiva lenders. This means that you may see repayments made on this loan throughout the repayment term, as opposed to receiving repayment in full at the end of the loan term.